Marry Me a Little
by VampirePam
Summary: Nicholas still couldn't figure out whose fault it was: The understaffed construction workers? The all-too helpful bartender? The strangely liberal clergywoman? Whoever was to blame, and however they got to the end, he remembered exactly how it had started: a handful of dust.


Nicholas still couldn't figure out whose fault it was: The understaffed construction workers? The all-too helpful bartender? The strangely liberal clergywoman?

Whoever was to blame, and however they got to the end, he remembered exactly how it had started: a handful of dust.

"Oi!" Danny pawed at Nicholas' sleeve. "What's this, then?"

"That," Nicholas announced, as poshly as he could manage in his current state of intoxication, "Is what we in London like to call...a jacket."

"Not _that_ , silly!" Danny cuffed Nicholas affectionately - if too eagerly - on the back of the head. "The dust! You're bloody covered in the stuff!"

"Well, Constable Butterman..." Nicholas schooled his face into an expression of somber professionalism. "Seems like you've found yourself a right puzzler. Why don't you put that melon of yours on the case?"

"You've…been dusting?" Danny ventured, face wreathed in a hopeful smile.

"Wrong kind of dust, I think," Nicholas mused - though after this many pints, he wasn't sure.

"Well, I dunno what kinda –" Danny stopped short and burst into a wild giggle that nearly sent him spinning off the barstool, onto the floor.

Nicholas had no idea what was supposed to be funny, but found himself clinging to the bar, fighting back a bad fit of the giggles anyway.

"Don't you see?" Danny inquired, once he could breathe again. "It's a drugs bust!"

"The only thing I _see_ is your train of thought careening off its track," Nicholas insisted.

"Exhibit A," Danny announced pompously, "Dust. Exhibit B: you, Sergeant Nicholas Angel."

"Which leads you to…" Nicholas had given up guessing the impossible.

Danny giggled again before exclaiming, "Well, it's _angel dust_ , in'nit?!" and fulfilling the earlier prophecy by falling off his stool.

"You're a loony, you know that?" Nicholas used every ounce of his honed strength to haul Danny back onto at least his knees, if not his feet.

"Bah, you love me for it." Danny grinned wide, utterly without guile, and Nicholas was struck with the sudden, shocking realization that maybe he _did_.

Before he had a chance to analyze this further, Danny demanded, "Well, if it's not drugs, and it's not tidying, where did the dust come from?"

"Cottage's still being renovated," Nicholas explained. "I wake up every morning with sawdust in a new place."

"Cor, if it's so bloody dusty over at yours, why don't you come and bunk with me?" Danny pulled himself back onto the barstool, clutching disconcertingly at Nicholas' front. "I've got plenty of room and piles of action flicks. We could get you caught up!"

 _Co-habitation, now that's a great idea. Plenty of time for Danny to show you how to 'switch off' as you exchange longing glances over Bad Boys 3 to 103. Let him down lightly, Angel. It's the only way._

"That's great of you, Danny," Nicholas hedged, "Really, it is. But I...I can't."

"But _whyyyyyyyy?_ " Danny pleaded. "You'd just be moving one door over. Why can't you staaaaaaay?"

In retrospect, this was the moment: the moment it all went wrong, the moment when all of the blame rested solely on his own shoulders.

Drunk and panicked, Nicholas blurted out the first thing that popped into his head: "I promised my mum I wouldn't live with anyone unless we got married first."

 _Why did I say that? What in God's name motivated me to say that? Quick, laugh or something, take it back before -_

With a suddenness that had Nicholas worrying he'd hurt himself, Danny dropped to one knee. "All righty, then. Will you, Nicholas Angel, visit the pub, watch action flicks, and generally be best mates with me tonight and tomorrow night and, whatsit they say, as long as we both shall live?"

The alarm bells that had been clanging dully in his head crescendoed to a piercing cacophony. "God, that's so sweet of you, Danny..." Nicholas began, but he didn't have a chance to finish before Danny was rocketing up to throw enthusiastic arms around his neck.

"Cor, what a great idea!" Danny said to Nicholas' jacket. "Can't believe I didn't think of it myself!"

Nicholas patted his back awkwardly, head spinning. _Nice going, Angel. Now you've really stepped in it. Still, you explain it to him now, no harm -_

"Pints all round, Johnny, my good man!" Danny announced, flinging himself off Nicholas to address the bartender. _Shit. Shit. Shit._ "The DI and I are getting hitched."

"Well, well, well, that _is_ a piece of good news and no mistake." John Carpenter had bought the Crown for a song after its owners were incarcerated. Since that day, he had served in good stead as the village bartender and confidante - and, until today, a voice of reason in a confusing world.

"About time too, some might say," his wife Maggie piped in from the back. "Well, _I_ would, at any rate!"

Nicholas frantically scanned the pub for someone, _anyone,_ to save him, but its few occupants were too busy clapping Danny on the back and shoving pints into Nicholas' hand - they paid the terrified expression on his face little mind.

"Drink up then, young fellow," Fred Fox the grocer - or was it the plumber? Too many new faces these days - exhorted. "Not every day a man gets married. Why I remember when I was courting my Sadie..."

"Oh, don't let him dredge up that old chestnut again, or we'll be here all night!" George Hunter the... _Butcher? Baker? Candlestick maker? Bollocks, he didn't care anymore..._ cut in, bringing Nicholas a pint of his own. "Pay mind to only one thing this silly beggar told ya and that's to drink up!"

In the face of such cheerful and high-spirited opposition, Nicholas' resolve wavered. After all, his beer-soaked brain reasoned, what problem was so great that a few pints - let alone a few complimentary ones - couldn't solve it? Where was the harm in indulging Danny for a few hours, then untangling the mess in the morning?

"A toast!" John proclaimed, lifting his own glass, "To the happy couple!"

"Wishing them a lifetime of happiness!" a high voice from the back of the crowd exclaimed. Nicholas had, by this time, ceased trying to figure out who anyone was.

"And one hell of a wedding night!" roared someone else, prompting raucous laughter from the crowd. As amiable slaps rained down on his back, Nicholas placed the first pint glass to his lips and soon drained it dry. More cheers, more slaps, and the second was gone almost as quickly.

It was at this point that things got fuzzy. He remembered drinking - oh God, such _drinking_ \- and laughing, then Danny hugging him, him hugging Danny, him _and_ Danny hugging loads of people he didn't remember ever meeting...

Then there was the scent of lilacs - it pervaded most of the subsequent events, bringing with it an air of intense sleepiness. Someone had prodded him in the ribs several times - one of the Andys? He couldn't have said which with a gun to his head - until he mumbled the right words. The transmission faded out completely after that.

This brought Nicholas Angel to the present: morning light stabbing at his eyelids, head throbbing to the beat of _We Will Rock You_ , barely clothed body sprawled over a bed...that was not his.

When panic pried his eyelids open, Nicholas found himself facing a steaming mug of coffee and another face, brimming with excitement.

"Hey, look who's up!" Danny was far, far too cheerful for this hour of the morning. "Afraid we'd lost you there... _hubby_."

That one word smashed all the disparate pieces of his memory together at once: the hugging, the lilacs, the prodding...the _vows._ If there remained any doubts in his mind about how colossally stupid he'd been, they were erased the second he caught sight of his hand - specifically, the thin band decorating his ring finger. _Fuck._


End file.
